UPG AUDI S2 FULL CARBON
Article: Des Cho
Photos: Des Cho, George Pavlov

NON-STANDARD STUFF!
We have a question for you: what has a smokestack, a dog, some cement and uhm… a parachute? Now we’ve gotcha! But the answer is pretty straightforward – it is this crazy UPG project we are going to tell you about.

So they wanted to make a beast. They took a standard Audi S2 with the original 5-cylinder, 20-valve, 2,2l DOHC engine, welded the metal space frame inside and cut everything else off – and we really mean everything. What is left of the original coupe is just two tiny details under the doors and on the sides of the windscreen. Everything else is carbon fiber (only the floor is made out of an aluminum sheet). What is (still) left standard are the differential, the brakes and the engine volume.

Now comes the non-standard stuff. The engine block is wider and the connecting rods are longer than the standard ones. To pull out some more muscle from the engine they put a GTX 4202R turbine, 10 2000cc injectors, and they cemented (!) the cooling channels. No cooling channels on the engine means no intercooler and no radiator and heat exchangers are needed. The cooling is done solely by the fuel, which by the way is (currently) methanol VP Racing M5 with some added nitro methane. The next evolution of the car (coming up soon) the methanol will be replaced by pure ethanol. In terms of electronics, the ECU is Haltech Platinum Sport 2000, and they used an SS Racepack dashboard.

The gear-box is the next thing on the line – they are counting on the choice of Par engineering, and it is of course a dogbox straight cut. The suspension is a K2, held by the front and rear axles, which are, needless to say, welded to the space frame.
Some interesting numbers: the car has somewhere between 900 and 1000whp and with a weight of about 900kg that makes a little more that 1hp per kilo. The terminal speed with the previous generation was 214km/h and since they are still putting in more and more power without some major advance in terms of brakes, they installed a parachute to ease the braking (or they might actually be planning on flying with the thing, who knows).

So, that’s where the cement, smokestack and parachute went… And now you’ll probably ask about the dog, right? Well, they have a team mascot – the Staffordshire Stiffler, who joyfully poses behind the wheel on one of the photos. So there you have it all an engine with cement, a turbine with a smokestack, a car with a parachute and a team with a dog – all the ingredients of a nice crazy job.